Teach & Serve V, No. 38
Buzz Aldrin’s Heart Rate
April 22, 2020
… when I think of my heart rate when dealing with the situations and challenges of the last months of changing the status quo for school… and I compare my heart rate to Aldrin’s and to the situations and challenges he faced, I hear myself telling myself one thing:
Calm down.
We are in an incredible time… at the beginning of this calendar year, few could have imagined that we would be staying at home, reinventing our work and ourselves, mourning our loses and attempting to discern what our next steps as individuals and society would be. Many of us have had the ground on which we stand shaken. We are looking to an unknown future and wondering what our lives will be like. And, perhaps, we are feeling stress, stress that wakes us at night, that causes us to question fundamental truths, that challenges our every perspective.
I was considering this when I thought of this anecdote.
Last year, I first heard the story of astronaut Buzz Aldrin’s heart rate during the Apollo 11 mission. It seems that, at liftoff, when the engines were firing and the rocket was shaking and all was on the line, Aldrin’s heart rate did not rise above 80. Throughout the journey, it did not rise much above 120.
There was a lot on the line. This was an in-the-spotlight moment. It was a life-and-death situation. One wrong move, and Aldrin and his crew mates could have died. One wrong button pressed and the most public mission for the United States of America – ever – could have failed.
80 beats per minute.
In considering this story and the situation facing my school right now, I got to wondering about my heart rate. I am middle aged, Aldrin was not. He was in a very, very high stakes profession. I am in a far less high stakes profession. He was a honed and toned soldier. I am… other.
But, when I think of my heart rate when dealing with the situations and challenges of the last months of changing the status quo for school, of making decisions about travel for students and when to close and how to conduct Emergency Remote Learning and what the grading scale should be and on and on and on and I compare my heart rate to Aldrin’s and to the situations and challenges he faced, I hear myself telling myself one thing:
Calm down.
Obviously, this is an unprecedented time. Obviously we are facing things for which we did not train. Obviously there is a lot on the line. But my school has yet to be struck tragically, thank God. Our students and their families seem safe. God willing they will remain that way. But, in my experience, in a crisis or not, as teachers and administrators, we sometimes can “ramp” ourselves up – get worked about about situations and scenarios that are rarely as bad as we think they are. I have found this all the more true in the last six weeks.
Our challenges are real. The decisions we make have repercussions. How often do lose perspective, lose control, lose a steady heart beat?
When I feel things bearing down on me, I am going to think of Buzz Aldrin and his heart rate, take a deep breath and slow down. Doing so will not change the world in which I live, but it will do me much good.
And it will make me a better leader.